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A gifted artist and writer, Branwell Bronte, an only son, is expected to make the family fortune and distinguish the Bronte name. Instead, he dies at 31 from alcohol and opium abuse. Painstakingly tutored at home by his father, Branwell and his sisters write endless stories about imaginary worlds far from their bleak parsonage home. As his sisters spin the stories that will immortalize them, Branwell sinks under the weight of great expectations. With language as rich and dark as the moors of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, Douglas A. Martin probes the locus where history and myth collide, and uncovers Branwell’s lost loves, thwarted talent, and possible homosexuality. Maintaining the haunting quality of childhood memory throughout, Bronte Boy is a genre-bending exploration of the tragic figure of Branwell Bronte and the dismal, dazzling landscape that inspired his sisters to greatness. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Beautifully forged ...
in a cauldron of literary brooding, sensuality, and suspense.Martin's performance is deliriously seductive.

A Tortured Life
Martin, Douglas A. "Branwell: A Novel of the Bronte Brother", Soft Skull Press, 2006.

A Tortured Life

Amos Lassen

I remember taking a graduate course in feminist literature and we read Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre". I fell in love with the book again; I had not read it since high school and now I felt that I had to know more about the Brontes. That was the first time I heard that there was a Bronte brother by the name of Branwell but there was not much available about him. I was glad to see the biography of him come out and I read it with great passion. He was Charlotte's younger brother and his life was tumultuous. He was a doomed artist and a homosexual and the only male sibling of the Bronte girls. He was home schooled. His mother and two of his sisters died young and he was shattered by this.
Branwell was sent to London and the Royal Academy and the managed to find a way to fall in the eyes of his family. He drank heavily and was apprentice to a secret freemason homosexual society; he lost his job as a tutor because of scandal. He became involved in the drug culture and became monomaniac.
Even with these problems, Branwell was a gifted artist and writer and he was expected to succeed by his family and to distinguish the family name. He did not and died at 31 because of alcohol and abuse from opium. Branwell could not live up to his father's expectations of him.
Martin uses a style that captures the essence of the Bronte boy as he gives us his story. The book is not just a telling of Branwell's life--it is related as through a dream. We see how he was involved with his literary sisters and his drug and alcohol abuse. His downfall is explicated in a way that the reefer feels he is losing a friend.
The emotion that Martin conveys is amazing and the narrative is beautiful as it is told in a fragmented way. Although we never really know what happened when he was dismissed as a tutor, Martin allows us to come to our own conclusions based upon what the tells us.
It is important, however, to remember that this is a novel and not a strict biography.

Poor Branwell
I didn't find this book poetic, mood-evoking, or compelling at all.The writing is artsy-fartsy affectation. Not to mention shallow and trite.

I've been reading books by and about the Brontes for most of my life.This includes literary criticism, biographies, and fictional novels based on their lives.With fiction a writer can speculate, take some liberties, expand on ideas concerning a famous literary genius' personality.That's to be expected and the result is often alluring.However, in this novel, there seems to be no setting of historical place. We have no idea if and when we are in the 18-teens, when Branwell was born, or the 1840's, when Branwell died. There is no background, no atmosphere, whether of the Yorkshire moors or England itself.Branwell Bronte's father and famous literary sisters are just names to be mentioned, shadowy puppets in the background, stick figures enacting the simplest reactions.There's no description - just a queasy glut of mood, if that's what it's to be called.The inferrence of Branwell's activities is the worst of all.The author coyly skirts around Branwell's "depravity", never settling in on naming it, only hinting at what might have occurred, and slithering the supposed events over with an oily, liquor-and-laudenaum-soaked fog of guessing.

Reknown Bronte historian and researcher Juliet Barker has proven without doubt, in discovering transcribed eyewitness accounts of the time, that Branwell Bronte did indeed have a sexual affair with his employer, Lydia Robinson, which was the direct cause for his dismissal as the Robinson son's tutor.He also known to have impregnanted one, perhaps two young women in neighborhoods where he was elsewhere employed.Whether or not he was also engaged in clandestine homosexual activities is something which has not been sufficiently proven even though it's been popular to hint at it for the past three decades (Barker refutes it, as well as do other contemporary Bronte biographers), but this was Branwell's own personal business anyway.What he definitely was not was a pedophile preying upon the child of the family for whom he worked.Artistic license has gone too far and made a sympathetic if pitiful historical figure repugnant, and to not zero in on the reactions of the protagonists, the effects upon all concerned, however fictional this device, is a cop-out.Instead the smarmy curtain of "mood" remains.

I think this book was a sorry failure at what it was attempting.Immediately upon finishing - for I forced myself to get through the entire thing - I tossed it into the giveaway pile - only because I can't bear to throw any book, no matter how bad, into the garbage can.

Branwell, an unforgettable failure
Consider three extraordinary girls and their brother who is only extraordinary because he breathed the same air and trod the same ground as his sisters, and is famous only by osmosis. Branwell Bronte was a failure, an excruciating failure, because he had the intellect but not the talent or the fiber to succeed as an artist or a writer. And he had to watch as his sisters spun their marvelous tales and became household names while he plunged deeper and deeper into a world of opium.

And indeed, this superb novel is written as the stuff of dreams, of a delirium, of a misty worldin which Branwell and Charlotte and Emily andAnne appear almost as wraiths, as ghosts on the moors, gone from this world in the blink of an eye. Nothing seems to be quite real, but this is Branwell's story, and poet Martin gives him understanding, substance and depth. Yet he is illusive, too, his red hair a badge of bravado but the rest of him fading away a bit more after each failure until he sunk into his death- bed, a hollow husk of the young man who had once shown such promise.

"Branwell" is a lyrical book, written by the hand and heart of a poet. In a way, in this book, Branwell comes into his own because we can identify with him so well. Highly recommended.

Douglas A. Martin has done it again!
The historical narrative of the one and only Bronte son, BRANWELL is a grand gesture, Martin's style is so dreamily crafted.The author not only reconstructs the permanent veiling of Branwell's spirit by way of his sisters' fame, but through prose as mesmeric as that found in his previous works, it seems as though Martin personally knows his protagonist, Patrick "Branwell" Bronte, alighting the years between with dexterity unlike any other. Martin is a time traveler and his books well-oiled machines, facilitating insight, enlightening, and grooming audiences for what is yet to come.This novel continues to educate far beyond its first reading. ... Read more

Product Description
A joint biography of Charlotte, Emily, Branwell, and Anne Bronte, exploring how the siblings sparked creativity in each other and how their lives were woven into their novels. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great introduction to the Brontes
This book is an excellent introduction, for the young and old, into the world of the Brontes. It's a slim volume full of wonderful photographs that, if nothing else, will serve to make the reader want to learn more about this family. Not just about the three daughters who published novels, but about the two men in the family who didn't. And you'll also want to know more about Tabby the maid. In the end, this book will lead you to read other books about the Brontes. And maybe, if you haven't already, you'll read all that they wrote and drew. ... Read more

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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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This book an EXACT reproduction of the original book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Publisher: London A.M. PhilpotSubjects: Brontë, Patrick Branwell, 1817-1848Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Poor Branwell
As far as I can ascertain, there are only two books devoted to Branwell. And this is one of them. The other one ("Profligate Son") is a bit better. Why has the brother of the Bronte sisters been so ignored? At least Dahpne took the time to notice him. But her book adds little truly useful and new information. So this book is better than nothing. I mean, so many think that Branwell influenced his sisters' writings. It's widely believed that the crazy wife locked inside a room in "Jane Eyre" was modeled after Branwell's fits and screams while drunk in his bedroom upstairs and also while later enduring the D.T.s upstairs in his father's room. He is also suppose to be represented through "Wuthering Heights." So why has so little been written about him? It's frustrating. ... Read more

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Works and lives of the Brontes ... Read more

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Chapters: Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Brontë, Anne Brontë, Branwell Brontë, Patrick Brontë, List of Brontë Poems, Brontë Way, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 64. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Anne Brontë (pronounced or ) (17 January 1820 28 May 1849) was a British novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family. The daughter of a poor Irish clergyman in the Church of England, Anne Brontë lived most of her life with her family at the small parish of Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. For a couple of years she went to a boarding school. At the age of nineteen, she left Haworth working as a governess between 1839 and 1845. After leaving her teaching position, she fulfilled her literary ambitions. She wrote a volume of poetry with her sisters (Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, 1846) and in short succession she wrote two novels. Agnes Grey, based upon her experiences as a governess, was published in 1847. Her second and last novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall appeared in 1848. Anne's life was cut short with her death of pulmonary tuberculosis when she was 29 years old. Anne Brontë is often overshadowed by her more famous sisters, Charlotte, author of four novels including Jane Eyre; and Emily, author of Wuthering Heights. Anne's two novels, written in a sharp and ironic style, are completely different from the romanticism followed by her sisters. She wrote in a realistic, rather than a romantic style. Her novels, like those of her sisters, have become classics of English literature. Anne from Branwell's group portrait (below)Anne's father, Patrick Brontë (17771861), was born in a meagre two-room cottage in Emdale, Loughbrickland, County Down, Ireland. He was the first of ten children born to Hugh Brunty and...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=2029 ... Read more